Make It Digital - DigitalNZ - MiD News

We're closing this blog and moving the posts

2011-09-29T10:06:33Z

We are in the process of updating the Make it Digital website.

As part of our planned refresh we have moved all our Make it Digital blog posts over to the brand spanking new DigitalNZ blog and created a new digitisation category. Head over there to check out all our posts on making New Zealand digital content easier to find, share, and use. Don't forget to check out our shiny new DigitalNZ Search as well!

The final stretch: Digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

2011-08-10T14:02:42Z

Make it Digital Award winners - University of Waikato Library have been blogging their experience of digitising the The British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand. This post describes their final sprint towards the finish line! You can read about the project progress and process in previous posts one, two and three.

It has been some time since our last update but we can report that we have been making progress.

Various key tasks have been worked on or completed including:

The webpages have been built and developed
Correcting of metadata for completed pages
Checking that all files have been added
Rights management -thanks Fiona and Lewis (from DigitalNZ) for our discussion on videoconference
We did have a few technical glitches but these have all been solved now.

We have recently sent out a test version to friends and colleagues and this resulted in some useful responses and has given us tweeks to work on and investigate.

And we can report another successful 'product' -a baby has arrived. Samia was born on 28 May 2011 to Abdi and his wife.

We hope to go live with a pilot soon.

Nelson Photo News Launched

2011-08-10T13:43:16Z

Make it Digital Award winners - The Friends of the Nelson Library Microfilm Sub-committee have been blogging their experience of working collaboratively to digitise the Nelson Photo News. This, their last post, tells us the happy news about their launch. You can read previous posts about the digitisation project process and progress here and here.

After a long gestation Nelson Photo News on-line was finally launched to an enthusiastic crowd on 18th July 2011.

The team responsible was surprised and delighted that Barry Simpson, the Nelson Photo News chief editor and photographer, was able to attend despite being in poor health in recent years. As Joanna Innes-Walker chairperson of the team remarked “my day was made when I saw Barry Simpson himself coming through the door”.

Barry Simpson (centre-left), the Nelson Photo News chief editor and photographer, with his daughter Annette Savage (centre-right) enjoying themselves with guests at the launch event.

To get the website up and running the project team had to resolve various issues including how to deal with copyright issues around images of the 1960’s era. The team are pleased they have shown a way for other cities around New Zealand to digitally publish their own Photo News. Usage figures from the website show that around 1000 people viewed the site in the week after the launch.

Feedback has been very positive and among other requests received has been one for more information on a long lost relative and one from the UK for permission to re-use a rare image of All Black coach Ivan Vodanovitch.

Some of the comments received:

Thanks Karen. I thought last night went off exceptionally well. Dad (Barry Simpson) enjoyed himself and we will look forward to showing him the site. Many thanks for all your hard work. I'm sure this is a site that will be well used. Annette Savage

What a terrific project! Congratulations to you for doing this. I have sometimes seen the odd, battered copy of the magazine in a second hand store and often thought what a great resource they would be. I think this would be great to use as a resource for high school students doing a specific study on past times in Social Studies or History. I hope that that does happen. I hope that other photo news do likewise.Josephine Maplesden

Nearly there - digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

2010-12-16T16:26:12Z

Make it Digital Award winners - University of Waikato Library are blogging their experience of digitising the The British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand:

Work has been proceeding apace on all aspects of the project. The scanning is all done. Thanks NZ Micrographics!

Here in Hamilton at the University of Waikato Library, two teams have been beavering away.

The busy Waikato University Library Team (with Licorice Allsorts) responsible for digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

One has been taking the scanned image files and breaking them up or combining them into their constituent reports and documents to create printable pdf files for each despatch. This is nearing completion though we have noted a small number of images that needed to be rescanned - a few pages with tears and holes and some others with blemishes have been found and new, replacement images are being prepared.

The other team has been reading through the text files after they had been ocr-ed. This has proved a tedious but necessary task and it has shown to staff how much useful and previously unrecognised material is lurking in these pages. We are about three quarters of the way through that proofreading which is correcting only key terms and names, not every word.

Mostly the ocr-ing has produced pages that are true to the original but there have been a few mistakes that we have spotted. We thought you might enjoy some of them:

Scanned text	What it should read:
F. Dillon Hell	F. Dillon Bell
Banged by the neck	Hanged by the neck
And this sum is required to make god	And this sum is required to make good
Such a policy requires a highly organised farce	Such a policy requires a highly organised force
Wellington Bangers	Wellington Rangers
I was assuming powers to which I had no light	I was assuming powers to which I had no right
A lime at least	A time at least
Aimed rebels	Armed rebels
I herewith enclose Major Eraser’s despatch	I herewith enclose Major Fraser’s despatch
Secretary of Slate	Secretary of State
for giants of confiscated lands	for grants of confiscated lands
Loo Papers relating to New Zealand	100 Papers relating to New Zealand
From these farts, you are the responsible tribunal	From these facts, you are the responsible tribunal

Finally, we have begun the process of building the collection and creating the web interface using Greenstone software developed by our colleagues in the University of Waikato Faculty of Computing and Mathematical Sciences.

Given that some documents have been completed we hope to have at least part of the collection live and accessible in the very near future. We will then add further material as it is finished.

Hamilton 15 December 2010

Great progress digitising the British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand

2010-10-07T15:36:10Z

Make it Digital Award winners - University of Waikato Library are blogging their experience of digitising the The British Parliamentary Papers relating to New Zealand.

We have been making steady progress with the digitisation of the British Parliamentary papers relating to New Zealand. New Zealand Micrographics were selected to scan and OCR the papers for us and this new partnership was kicked off with an audioconference to discuss the project and refine the details. Many questions were asked and answered, and we all came away feeling more knowledgeable and positive about where we are heading. In order to get the papers to Wellington, New Zealand Micrographics said they would despatch a baby freight container. When it arrived we decided if this was the baby one we did not want to see the grown up version! Our project papers filled approximately one third of the box but with plenty of packaging to tuck them in they were on their way south.

A pilot set of papers have been scanned, passed Quality Control and had the OCR completed. We were impressed with the clarity of the images and agreed that the OCR was sufficiently accurate. We were chomping at the bit, ready to get on with the mass scanning by this time, but there were still some questions to consider, particularly around the file naming and the handling of the non-standard pages (e.g. foldout maps). Eventually, these were resolved after a good number of emails flew along the wires. We really appreciated the input of New Zealand Micrographic Services here, as their experience and suggestions enabled us to make some quick decisions, particularly around the tricky nomenclature issues.

While NZMS started scanning in earnest, back in the Library we were thinking about the search parameters and web interface for the digital collection. National Library’s webpage for their Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives project was launched recently and we were all impressed by its layout and ease of use. Given the similarity of the two projects and our intention to also use Greenstone software, it seems sensible that we should produce a webpage similar in style and function. (We are also great proponents of the library philosophy of making use of shared expertise and not reinventing the wheel!) The master access images have recently arrived from New Zealand Micrographics so we now have two big tasks ahead of us – to combine (and in some cases breakup) page images to create printable PDFs of each despatch, and to proofread and carry out essential edits of the OCRed text.

It definitely feels that we are making progress.

Nelson Photo News Project Now in Full Swing

2010-09-06T15:45:29Z

Make it Digital Award winners - The Friends of the Nelson Library Microfilm Sub-committee are blogging their experience of working collaboratively to digitise the Nelson Photo News.

Following many years of fundraising, digitisation of the Nelson Photo News by the Nelson Library Microfilm Subcommittee is now in full swing.

Once we had secured sufficient funding, the first step was to put together a full set of magazines and Nelson Public Library were very helpful in handing over their set for the project to use.
To ensure that contaminants weren't passed on to the Nelson Provincial Museum collection, the magazines had to undergo a requisite period of freezing and treating, before condition reporting could commence.

Volunteers at Nelson Provincial Museum then began the task of checking through each copy of the Nelson Photo News checking for marks, defects or missing pages to ensure that the set which was digitised was as complete and pristine as possible.

Nelson Provincial Museum Digital Cataloguing Technician Megan Hansen-Knarhoi and Museum Volunteer Pam Mason work on condition reporting Nelson Photo News issues loaned by Joan Inwood from Richmond for the project

At the end of the process it was found that several additional issues were needed to complete the set. Following a call in local newspapers for owners of Photo News collections to come forward, we were able to secure the missing issues from a private collection.

"Taming the Mighty Maitai" Photo spread Nelson Photo News. 1969, Nelson N.Z. : Logan: 99 (Feb 6), 60-61

"Terrific Fun for a Tremendous Crowd" Image by Barry Simpson, Nelson Photo News Collection: 1394 fr 15

While condition reporting work continued, three issues chosen from the early, middle and end publishing periods were sent away to the digitisation supplier to be used for a pilot test study. These three issues will be digitised in line with the proposal submitted by the supplier and at the end, a working sample of the proposed website will be available for us to look at online. The sample will also include examples of various options so that we can evaluate these and establish our preferences before the full digitisation commences. It will also allow us to check how images appear, the resolution at which they appear and how images could be suppressed if we can not run images because of copyright issues. Once this example has been refined to a working standard, the remainder of the issues will be sent away for the wholesale digitisation work to begin.

"Nelson's Music Industry" photo spread in Nelson Photo News. 1965, Nelson N.Z. : Logan: 51 (Feb 6), 38-39

"Final tests are made by Mr H F Roberts" Barry Simpson, Nelson Photo News Collection: 3285 fr 4

Nelson Photo News - Make it Digital Award Project Update

2010-08-09T14:59:36Z

This is the first in a series of posts from our second Make it Digital Award winners - The Friends of the Nelson Library Microfilm Sub-committee. The Make it Digital award winners are sharing their real life experience of getting their digitisation projects off the ground.

Nelson Photo News. 1963, Nelson N.Z. : Logan:30 (Apr 27)

The first run of the Nelson Photo News is a rare and unique
photographic record of life in Nelson in the early 1960’s and 1970’s –
a time of rapid social and cultural change. The serial captures
personal and community events through photographs and lively
commentary.

The Project Steering Group

Friends of the Nelson Library Microfilm Sub-committee - Image Courtesy of Nelson Mail

The Friends of the Nelson Library Microfilm Sub-committee responding to
community pressure to do something about preserving and making
accessible this valuable resource, have been fundraising for a number
of years to enable the digitisation of the issues from 1960 - 1972 to
proceed. Winning the grant from Digital NZ was an exciting time for the
committee as it meant the project can now come to fruition.

The project is very much a collaborative effort, with the The Friends
of the Nelson Library Microfilm Sub-committee composed of members from
the Nelson Public Libraries: nga whare matauranga o whakatu, the Nelson
Provincial Museum: Pupuri Taonga o Te Tai Ao, Nelson Historical
Society, Nelson Institute and the Nelson Branch of the New Zealand
Society of Genealogists.

To date the committee has been responsible for several microfilming and
digitisation projects including the microfilming of the Nelson Mail and
the digitisation of the Nelson Historical Journals.

Why We Are Digitising?

As the editor Barry Simpson stated in the first issue: “Our experience
…. indicates that many people allow the first issue or two to be
destroyed, which is regretted later…subscribers grow to value the
pictorial record of community life.”
Unfortunately most early issues of the Nelson Photo News have been
discarded, and over the run only a handful of complete sets are
believed to exist in private collections; currently there are no full
sets held in the public domain.

The publication of each issue of the Nelson Photo News was a popular
event and over the years the publication has reached almost iconic
status locally. With a 'roving cameraman' style to the publication,
many Nelsonians feature in past editions and feedback indicates that
they are keen to see themselves again in their 1960s glory!

Nelson Photo News. 1960, Nelson N.Z. : Logan:2 (Dec 10).

"The Photo News magazines are part of my history. Oh the excitement on
the day they went on sale each month, and the competition in our house
to be first to read it. I fully support this publication being
digitised. On a personal level it would be great to be able revisit
these magazines. On a wider aspect, there is huge content of historical
value to the Nelson region and its people. "

Nelson Photo News. 1963, Nelson N.Z. : Logan:27 (Feb 2).

With limited issues available, digitisation of this serial will ensure
that this important snapshot of 1960s life will be not only preserved,
but readily accessible to the wider community.

Despatches from Down Under- the British Parliamentary Papers from and to New Zealand

2010-08-09T14:56:26Z

This is the first in a series of posts from Make it Digital Award winners - University of Waikato Library. We've invited both award winners to share their real life experience of getting their digitisation projects off the ground.

We were delighted to hear the news that we had won one of the “Make it Digital” awards. As our colleague Emma Pooley described it -we had made it as NZ Digitisation Idols!

Once we knew we had the funding though it was time to form the project implementation team and get our planning and work underway. John Robson, the Map Librarian, began preparing the documents ready for scanning while Vye Perrone (Project Co-ordinator) and Abdi Ali (Library Computer Systems Consultant) worked on the administration and technical aspects of the project. Kathryn Parsons, the New Zealand Collection Librarian is principal advisor to the project with her past experience in digitisation and her New Zealand history expertise. Fiona Rigby and Lewis Brown from National Library have offered much valuable information and support.

Our task is to digitise the British Parliamentary Papers Relating to New Zealand, covering the period from 1835 to 1882. This set of documents contains a huge amount of valuable information on a large range of subjects covering a crucial period in New Zealand’s history. It is material that only a few libraries in New Zealand hold so digitisation will make it available to a far wider audience and much easier to use.

The process:

The material to be scanned has all been removed from its old original bindings. Each document has been separated into single sheets ready for sending to the company chosen to scan it.

For each document a contents list of all the despatches, letters, etc therein has been compiled noting the sender, recipient, date, pagination of each item as well as any enclosures and maps associated with it. The project has been structured so that in the future, work can continue to cover the documents not forming part of the Library’s original set.

In the meantime too, the full specifications for the project have been developed and test pages scanned using a range of resolutions. This has been a bit of a learning curve as we dived deeply into unfamiliar technical terminology and detail. We wanted to be sure that we had a solid understanding of what would need to be done to ensure long term preservation while maximising access for current researchers. With this complete, and our understanding advanced, we are now selecting a company to do the scanning and OCRing of the Papers. As soon as that selection is made, the original sheets will be packaged and dispatched.

Kathryn Parsons
University of Waikato Library

Announcing the Make It Digital Award recipients

2010-04-27T09:58:04Z

DigitalNZ is delighted to announce that the Make It Digital Awards will be making some excellent New Zealand content easier to find, share and use.

We put together a top notch panel of judges to take on the unenviable task of selecting the winners from the 10 really interesting entries.

The Make it Digital Judges:

Jock Phillips: Jock is the General Editor of the Te Ara - The Online Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Jock is also the author of A man’s country? and other published works in New Zealand history. He took up the gauntlet to create the world’s first born-digital national encylopedia after many years as a historian teaching at Victoria University of Wellington (where he founded the Stout Research Centre) and serving as Chief Historian for the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

Adrian Kingston: Adrian is Collections Information Manager Digital Assets and Development at Te Papa, he is responsible for the development of the Museum's Collection Information System, work with thesauri and controlled vocabulary, management of the Museum's digital assets, and getting Te Papa's collections out into the digital world. Adrian has been at Te Papa since 2001, working in the Art and Photography collections before moving into Collections Information in 2004.

Virginia Gow: Virginia is DigitalNZ’s Content Manager. She has worked on digital initiatives at the National Library of New Zealand since 2005, specialising in collaborations across the cultural heritage sector such as Matapihi, and web content development. Prior to working at the National Library, she was a production editor for Te Ara, the online encyclopedia of New Zealand.

The Make it Digital Judges went through rigorous selection process that included:

Checking for basic entry requirements
A pre-selection assessment against the award criteria
Prioritisation using the Make it Digital Scorecard

And the winners are:

Digitisation of Nelson Photo News – Microfilm sub-committee of the Friends of the Nelson Library
Nelson Photo News is a rare and unique photographic record of life in the Nelson region in the early 1960s and 1970s.

Our judges said:
While this is a regional project we believe it will provide access to pictorial content from a period that is not commonly available online. Therefore, it will have significance to New Zealanders and contribute to a wider understanding of our culture and heritage. The project process has been well thought out and you have demonstrated significant community support. We were also pleased to note the discussion and understanding of rights and licensing issues.

Despatches from Down Under: The papers of the New Zealand colony – from and to the British Colonial Office - University of Waikato Library
The British Parliamentary Papers (BPP) are a significant source of important and largely untapped information about New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century. They comprise reports, correspondence and other documentation sent to the Government in Britain and cover all aspects of life and events in the colony at the time.

Our judges said:
This project has significance to New Zealanders and will contribute to a wider understanding of our culture and heritage. The project process has also been well thought out and demonstrated community support via the Make It Digital voting tool. Judges also noted that this content will complement other digitisation efforts that are in progress.

These two projects will be providing updates and reports through Make it Digital so that we can follow their progress and learn from real life digitisation projects.

We wish all of the Make it Digital entrants the very best with progressing their projects.

DigitalNZ is more than happy to give advice about digitisation projects via Make it Digital. We’d love to hear from you!

$10,000 to kick-start your digitisation project!*

2009-12-01T16:26:23Z

Make it Digital has two awards of up to $10,000 on offer for organisations who have NZ content they want to digitise and make easier to find, share and use.

To enter, organisations need to register their Make it Digital project on makeit.digitalnz.org/voting and then encourage votes and comments from their community along with completing a supporting application to tell us why the project is important.

Find out more.

*Terms and conditions apply